User Reviews

The Janitor by Michael Tuviera is a pretty good and decent movie. Following in the footsteps of Erik Matti's somewhat overrated On The Job, it does a commendable work in its portrayal of a morally ambiguous cold-blooded killer.

Newbie Tuviera sure knows how to keep audiences glued to the screen with his tight visual narrative and indie sensibility. The guy seems to channel Matti's style, particularly the torture scenes resemble the opening interrogation sequence in a latter Matti film, Buybust. There's also a hint of Lore Reyes and Peque Gallaga in Tuviera's work, both directors being major influences in Matti's filmmaking approach. Tuviera's concept for the film is also intriguing as it tackles the idea of false information and what a man will resort to, to stay alive. Not to mention that the release of the film is a legitimate move to revive the extinct action genre in Philippine cinema.

Dennis Trillo is also noteworthy in essaying the role of a "cleaner". He has the unassuming demeanor necessary in playing a man with a secret life. His acting here is pretty good that he could also very well play a serial killer or a psycho. Trillo is one of the few leading men who could pull this off based on his acting range as can be seen in his past choice of roles from Zaido (a Filipino adaptation of the Japanese show Shaider) and his on point portrayal of religious sect leader Felix Manalo.

Some of the action scenes in the film are kinda neat such as the fight sequence with Raymond Bagatsing's character though the scene was obviously cribbed from the Donnie Yen starrer Flash Point. The fight with Derek Ramsey's character on the other hand is kind of lousy and looked like two dudes rehearsing, not fighting. The fight lacks spontaneity and energy in spite of its obvious nod to mixed martial arts ground fighting. Anyone who wants an artful and respectable incorporation of MMA style brawling in movies should definitely see the finale of the aforementioned Flash Point as that sequence blows away all other gritty fight scenes into the water.

My one main problem though with Tuviera's film is his willful bypassing of seemingly "minor" details that aid in the realism of a movie and helps the viewer to better exert the suspension of disbelief. This somewhat "trivial" detail is mainly connected to how physics or physical reality is depicted in the movie. In real life, when bullets hit an object, they leave signs or marks of damage while in Tuviera's film, when bullets hit a human being, not even the hint of a scratch is shown. Now this is due to a sort of self censorship imposed by the filmmakers to avoid an X rating by the government movie classifications board. Simply put, Tuviera's film loses a lot of edge and impact because of this absence of blood effects.

In conclusion, there's a lot to like in Tuviera's film but it is set in a parallel universe. A universe where the laws of physics don't apply.

It used to be that indie films meant a film with an intense story wrapped around an interesting topic of focal interest, but with largely unknown actors and relatively poorer production values than mainstream films, as they were either poorly lit or roughly edited. So therefore, they would be of interest to only serious cinephiles in film festivals, like the Cinemalaya.

But as I got to watch more and more local indie films over the years, I see that more and more mainstream actors are getting into the indie scene, and that the production values are getting much cleaner and better. Save for a few little details, this film "The Janitor" follows the lead of last year's "On the Job", with its big name stars and sleek production, it also looks and feels like a very commercial mainstream film.

"The Janitor" is about Crisanto Espina (Dennis Trillo), a committed cop who was suspended when he shot a minor drug suspect dead. On June 21, 2011, the Mabuhay Bank in San Pedro, Laguna was held up and ten of its employees were killed. A drug addict tricycle driver Junjun Carasco (Nicco Manalo) was apprehended for questioning and a list of suspects was tortured out of him. The new police chief Bugaouisan (Ricky Davao) instructs a senior police officer Rudy Manapat (Richard Gomez) to handle the case Solitaire style, which turned out to mean summary execution. Manapat assigns Espina to "clean up" these suspects.

Dennis Trillo credibly played the flawed hero Espina. We see Trillo's quiet tender side at home, in his scenes with his new wife Melba (LJ Reyes) pregnant with their first son, his mother Ester (Irma Adlawan) left a vegetable after a major stroke, and his dad Monching (Dante Rivero) a grumpy perverted old man who never forgave his disgraced son. On the other hand, when he is "on the job" so to speak, action star Trillo comes out with some very well-choreographed chase and fight scenes.

We suffer together with poor Nicco Manalo throughout his cruel torture scenes, the method of which was determined by a spinning a wheel, be it Helmet or Kwek Kwek, among several other brutal ways. The one called Adidas made some queasy audience members scream with its realistically bloody rendition. The execution scenes escalated from simple to complex. The way Alex Medina was killed in a cornfield was suffused with suspense. The way Raymond Bagatsting was killed was extremely thrilling, effectively eliciting shrieks from the audience.

Derek Ramsey, who plays the idolized scourge of drug lords SPO3 Dindo Marasigan, was given an idealized masculine presence on screen, with his steamy bed scene with the sexy Kristal (Sunshine Garcia), his big macho wheels, his devil-may-care demeanor and look.

The technical aspects of film-making, particularly the cinematography and the sound, were excellent. There were some editing issues noted though, such as in the fight scene between Trillo and Ramsey where the gun on the floor was drastically shifting position with every scene, or in one of the first scenes when Trillo seemed to have made the sign of the cross in reverse. I was also confused whether Manapat and Espina were policemen from Laguna or Manila, because I thought I saw Manila on their badges of their uniforms.

Although it is not exactly to the caliber of "On the Job" with which it shared some similarities (the summary executions topic and the poster style, to mention a couple), "The Janitor" is an entertaining and exciting action film which the mainstream audience will also like. Director Michael B. Tuviera has succeeded to create an indie film with a definite commercial look, feel and appeal. Yesterday, it had already been declared the box-office hit of the festival. A blockbuster regular run won't be far behind. 7/10.